On the kitchen table, his phone lit up and vibrated. Again. He checked the screen and saw it wasn’t Abbie—of course it wasn’t Abbie. Then he had a flash of recklessness and picked up anyway.
“What?” He was trying to stay quiet, so his voice came out an irritable rasp.
“Uh…” Kara sounded shocked as shit that he’d answered, but she quickly rallied. “Will. Finally, you picked up.” As always, a little time at home had made her California drawl strange to his ears. “What, did you come to your senses?”
“I was already at my senses,” he insisted, then frowned. Was that right? Did that make sense?
“Debatable, kiddo.” Kara snickered. “Listen. I know you’re home for the family Christmas right now—”
“No,” Will said firmly, and a bit wonkily. “I’m home for good. Hear me?”
“Are you drunk, Will? Never mind, don’t answer that. I know you’re home now, but how about in the new year, you come see me? We’ll have lunch and talk this through—”
“We’ve talked it through.”
She spoke blithely over him. “I’ve gotten a ton of scripts for you. Tons. It’s been a while, but you’re still hot with the teenage audience.”
“I hate teenagers,” Will said, which wasn’t true. But he wanted to see what Kara would do next.
Her response was smooth as shit. “You wanna go in a different direction? No problem. There’s this little indie flick about a beet farmer who’s searching for a godly woman and finds the devil instead—you wouldn’t be up for the lead, but there’s a supporting role as the beet farmer’s emotionally abusive uncle.”
Will frowned. “Uncle? I’m thirty-one.”
“Oh, yeah. The beet farmer is nineteen. Anyway, he finds this girl—”
“I don’t care,” Will interjected, which was the clearest he’d ever been, or rather, the rudest he’d ever been. He didn’t give a shit. It’d been months since he’d told Kara he was no longer interested in show business, and she’d been like a dog with a fucking bone ever since. “Okay? I don’t care. Stop it. I’m done.”
She scoffed. “You cannot be serious. All this over—what? A woman?”
He took another mouthful of gin and let it strip his throat like acid. “Mm-hm.”
“Like she wouldn’t jump at the chance to marry a famous actor and move to Hollywood,” Kara said, clearly growing desperate.
Will chuckled. “Nope.”
When Abbie had rejected him today, the whole Hollywood thing had been more of a negative than a positive—which he’d always known it would be.
But the biggest negative was, apparently, him. I can’t do this, she’d said, and really, was there a clearer, if gentle, no-fucking-way in all of history? Definitely not. Another imaginary blade slid between his ribs to join the rest.
“How are you gonna keep this girl,” Kara demanded, “if you have no money?”
“I have plenty of money,” Will said absently, already losing interest in the conversation. He squinted at the bottle of gin on the counter. Was it a trick of the light, or had he drunk more than the sneaky glass he’d intended? Ms Tricia would skin him alive for stealing her stash.
“Do you have enough money for—for children?” Kara demanded triumphantly. He had a feeling she was searching her mind for the trappings of romance boring heterosexuals like him preferred.
But he knew for a fact that Abbie didn’t want children, which didn’t really matter, since she wouldn’t be having them or abstaining from having them with him. So he gave a straightforward answer. “I have enough money for a herd of fucking elephants, Kara. You and me—we grew up in very different ways, you know.”
“I know, I know. I’m just worried about you, kid. Do you even know what you’re gonna do with your life?”
Will sighed. “Yeah. I do.” He had it all planned out, sort of. He knew it would be a nice, normal, family-oriented existence, anyway. But it suddenly looked a lot bleaker now he knew for a fact he wouldn’t be doing it with Abbie.
As if the thought had called her, Will caught sight of a moving shadow from the corner of his eye and turned. There she stood in the doorway, her hair tied up for bed and her body wrapped up in what seemed to be puppy-print pyjamas. If only said puppies were enough to distract him from the contours of her body beneath said pyjamas—but they weren’t, so after a second he dragged his gaze above her neck and kept it there. He couldn’t see her eyes, not in the low light, but a slash of moonlight spilled over the lower half of her face, and he could tell by the set of her mouth—firm, full, tightening at the corners—that something was bothering her.
“Gotta go,” he said, and put the phone down, cutting off Kara’s squawked “What?”
“Who was that?” Abbie asked. Her voice was quiet and inflectionless. He really, really wished he could see her eyes.
“No one.”
“No one,” she echoed, and came into the kitchen. There was a cat in her arms—Dumpling, he thought its name was—and as she moved, it opened its glowing eyes and leapt gracefully to the floor. Unburdened, Abbie came to join him at the table. Now he could see her face, and he’d been right to think she was annoyed. In fact, her eyes—tired behind her glasses, but dark and dangerous as still-hot coals—said she was angry. “Does no one always make you sound so upset?” she demanded, like if the answer was yes, she’d bash no one over the head.
“Upset?” Will frowned, his thoughts sluggish in his brain. He realised after a second that Abbie had overheard his depressed mumblings and assumed they were Kara’s fault, when actually, he’d been focused on Abbie herself.
Not that he was going to admit it. He’d had enough of freaking her out with feelings she hadn’t asked for. So he spilled another of his secrets, daring her to tell him what Kara already had: that he was being a fool. “It was my agent,” he said. “She’s pissed because I quit my job.”
Abbie blinked, looking as shocked as he’d ever seen her. “You what?”
“Yeah, I quit.”
He was waiting for some sort of judgement when Abbie took the wind out of his sails by asking with genuine concern, “Is everything okay? Are you okay?”
He kind of deflated. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “It’s weird. But it was … time, I think.”
She leaned closer. “What does that mean, time?”
Will shrugged. “I was done with it.” Done with his latest project, yes. And done with always being on show, done with performing even when he wasn’t on set. Done with being apart from the people he loved, done with the strange schedules and the surreal lifestyle. He was grateful for every opportunity he’d had, and he knew full well that he’d achieved his success because he looked a certain way, fit a certain mould, and had been extremely fucking lucky—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be tired of it.